In a personal essay published Tuesday in Slam Magazine, LaVar Ball detailed a life-threatening health scare that led to his right leg being amputated below the knee in January.

It turned out that LaVar Ball—the ex- Washington State forward whose larger-than-life personality made him a household name in the late 2010s—was battling a serious health scare. In February, reports emerged he'd had a foot amputated, and he detailed his harrowing ordeal in a first-person essay for Slam on Tuesday.

Ball said his hospital stay coincided with LiAngelo Ball's song "Tweaker" going viral in January: "Funny how life works sometimes." "I had an infection on my foot that started spreading through my blood due to not paying attention to my diabetes,